In the weeks since his nomination for the State Department's top legal position, Koh has become a lightning rod for controversy and a rallying point for opponents of Obama's emerging doctrine of increasing international engagement. When it convenes to consider Koh's nomination this afternoon, the committee will navigate a maze of conflicting stories from both sides to make the correct decision.

An increasingly beleaguered Koh has weathered a maelstrom of vitriol from print and television media. ("Koh: A threat to democracy?" Fox News blared hysterically.) He has been called un-American, seditious, dangerously radical; charged with, among other things, endorsing the application of Islamic sharia law by American courts.

In the eye of the firestorm is Koh's spirited defense, as an academic and career human rights lawyer, of "transnationalism," the belief that U.S. courts can and should under certain circumstances incorporate international legal sources--including foreign judicial opinions--into their judgments. An anecdotal reference to Koh including sharia law in that category, later confirmed to be apocryphal, was leveraged to stoke the histrionics.

I met Koh five years ago when he was beginning his tenure as dean of Yale Law School, and was later a student in his notorious first-year civil procedure course. Buoyed by his not-insubstantial personal charisma, Koh is a giant of a teacher, pacing like a caged animal, taut with manic energy, gesticulating wildly through lectures of terrific speed and flamboyance. His views themselves, however, are considerably less colorful, and fail to square with the heretical proportions to which his critics have inflated them.

To the disappointment of his excitable critics, Koh has never suggested the subordination of the American legal system to foreign powers. He has championed respect for our obligations under treaties to which the U.S. has explicitly signed. He views international legal sources as a valid--but not binding--source of inspiration and perspective for U.S. courts.

The use of such nonbinding sources to bolster legal arguments is a central and uncontroversial tenet of the American judicial process: Law review articles and other academic sources are a lynchpin of the opinions of courts everywhere; current Chief Justice John Roberts has even cited a Bob Dylan song.

Moreover, and too frequently overlooked in the frisson of recent weeks, Koh's work as a transnationalist has been more descriptive than prescriptive. He has devoted a portion of his well-respected body of publications to chronicling the historical reality that U.S. judges have been citing international legal sources for generations.

A string of prominent Supreme Court cases dating back more than 100 years is testament to that; on the current court, justices across the political spectrum, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Antonin Scalia, have cited foreign law. His stance is, if anything, strikingly orthodox. Koh is an embracer of a storied status quo, hardly the judicial revolutionary he's been made out to be.

The chaos spurred by Koh's nomination has less to do with his own views than it does with his critics' long-term fears. Koh's oft-vaunted potential as a Supreme Court nominee has triggered a frenzied attempt at preemptive discreditation. It has made him an unwarranted symbol in the broader debate over the Obama administration's increasing push against Bush-era isolationist tactics.

The truth is that Koh himself commands fairly universal respect among those familiar with his work. He is not a radical academic, but a pragmatist with deep legal and political savvy built during years of service in Ronald Reagan's Department of Justice and Bill Clinton's State Department; not a sharia sympathizer but a heroic champion of women's and minority rights; not an anti-American seditionist but a passionate champion of American constitutional ideals.

When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convenes this afternoon, senators on both sides of the aisle should ensure that he doesn't become a casualty to a smear campaign that has little to do with Koh himself. The committee, and its presiding senator, John Kerry, should move to confirm Koh and work to keep sensationalist fear-mongering to a minimum in the process. A public servant who would be an asset to America's future--and the public's faith in the confirmation process itself--hang in the balance.

Ronan Farrow, who is currently writing a book on America's use of proxy armies, has worked on human rights issues at the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the U.N.